Strategies of evasion ...

... The American Conservative - Speak No Evil. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

For 19 months Ruthie—who, incidentally, never smoked—had struggled with Stage IV lung cancer, an aggressive form that kills something like 80 percent of its victims within a year of diagnosis. The main tumor had wrapped itself like a serpent around her superior vena cava, the second- largest vein in the body, threatening to kill her from a heart attack. Every day she lived with the possibility that it would be her last. Yet according to her friend, Ruthie casually admitted, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, that she had never spoken in detail with Mike, her husband, about what should happen if she died.

As she did less than 12 hours later.